The Catholic Man Show

Dave turned 40 this week, one day before they hit record, and he wants it understood that he has been looking forward to this. Thirty was a bummer. Forty is different. He expects his forties to be a decade of proficiency instead of a decade of learning how to do everything for the first time: better father, better disciplinarian, better coach, better husband, better at the farm. A decade of potency, he called it, which Adam immediately took in the least charitable direction available and turned into a bit about donating blood and testosterone at the same time. Before that, though, there was a real moment. Adam asked how his spiritual life was and Dave told the truth. He has been in a down recently, the kind where things you have always known to be sinful start to look not that bad, and the only thing that held the line was habit. Intellectual habit, built over years, doing exactly what habit is supposed to do when feeling has gone quiet. Then the piglets. Adam has been building a pig pen since last fall, thinking it through all winter, and Dave finally called to say his sow's litter was ready. Adam ran hot wire that morning, got everything set, and had the sense to put just one pig in first to see what would happen. The pig touched the hot wire, did not get shocked, backed up four steps, ran, and cleared the boards. Twenty seconds. It landed close enough that Adam caught it by a back leg. Welcome to the swine herd community.
Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Free, no paywall, no subscription. It is how Adam and Dave get their kids ready to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. Download the Amen app.
Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, everyone they asked pointed to the same name: Select International Tours. Having used them, the guys can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether leading a pilgrimage or joining one, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they have ready for you.
The pour is Pabst Blue Ribbon, which won a blue ribbon at some point a long time ago and has been telling everyone about it ever since. Adam will defend it. Not as a great beer, but as a beer that belongs in the category of things you can hand a man who walks into your house without apologizing. Oklahoma has been over 100 degrees for something like seventy straight days, all of July and all of August, and on a day like that PBR is exactly right.
Then the main topic. Wendell Berry died August 31 at home in Port Royal, Kentucky, at 92. Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, essayist, five generations on the same ground his family had worked since the early 1800s. He took degrees from the University of Kentucky, went off to the city to be a writer, got everything a young writer is supposed to want, and decided quickly that it was not what he wanted. So he went home. He farmed with horses long after he could afford a tractor. His writing cabin, 16 by 20 feet on stilts over the Kentucky River, had no electric light. He never owned a television or a computer and never sent an email in his life. He answered his mail by hand, including letters from strangers, at length, signing every one "your friend, Wendell Berry."
Dave once told Adam that Berry is his favorite person to read with whom he disagrees, and that line has stuck. Dave is not a pacifist. There are foundational places where he and Berry part ways. But reading Berry sharpened his own thinking precisely because the case on the other side was so well made, so obviously pondered and re-pondered over decades. Not rookie opinions. Not virgin thoughts. Which raises a question worth sitting with: who do you read that you disagree with? Most men cannot answer it, and that is the problem.
Berry's own account of what the land taught him: patience, because the crop keeps its own schedule and will not wait for you. Consequence, because there is no control-Z on a hillside. He plowed and dug a pond on sloping Kentucky ground and then watched it wash out, taking with it topsoil that had taken a thousand years to accumulate a millimeter at a time. Scale, because the land you keep is known intimately by you and nobody else, which spots bloom first, which die first, and holding that in your head is closer to a virtue than a skill. The body as a means of knowing, because the health of the mind proves itself in physical work. And fidelity to one place over time. Asked by NPR in 1998 what he would tell young people, he said stop some place and stay there, and learn the history of it, the names of the plants and the animals and your neighbors.
Adam brought in Josef Pieper to name what that is. Working hard is not the opposite of sloth. The opposite of sloth is the glad acceptance of your own life. A man can be busy at every hour of the day and still be a slothful man, because the busyness is a way of refusing the life he actually has.
Dave read The World-Ending Fire on Adam's recommendation and could not get past a passage early on about the difference between a path and a road. A path is submissive to the terrain. It yields to creation, goes through the trees, puts you in nature instead of over it. A path is almost a virtue, a habit of travel, a memory you relive, an inheritance you walk because others walked it first. A road does violence to it. You level the ground and go through instead of being part of it.
Which sets up the essay. In 1987 Berry published "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," and it went on to become the most reprinted thing he ever wrote, which is its own joke. He gave nine standards a new tool ought to meet: cheaper than what it replaces, no bigger in scale, demonstrably better at the work, less energy, ideally powered by something like the body, repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with ordinary tools, purchasable and repairable near home, sold by a small shop that will take it back, and the hard one, number nine: it should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, including family and community relationships. We have almost entirely stopped asking that one. We look at output and never at cost, and technology almost always charges its cost in person-to-person contact.
His three reasons were dependence, household, and self-deception. Dependence on strip-mined Kentucky coal to run the thing. Household, because the model being discarded was his wife, Tanya, his editor, his critic, his closest reader and fellow worker, and going up to date as a writer would have meant sacrificing an association he treasured and depended on. That reason is what critics went after hardest, feminism being what it was in 1987, and he answered them in print. Self-deception last, and best: he simply did not believe anyone writes better with a computer than with a pencil. Show him work demonstrably better than Dante's, demonstrably attributable to the machine, and he would speak of computers in a more respectful tone of voice, though he still would not buy one.
The guys are fair to it and to themselves. Dante is not a fair standard, since nobody in the 300 years before the computer wrote as well as Dante either. But the point underneath it holds. Berry wrote in pencil because when you cross out a word and write another above it, the path you traveled is still visible in front of you, the way a footpath is. And there is something sacramental about it. The pencil hitting the paper is the incarnation of a thought. The labor is not an obstacle to the writing. The labor is the writing, and the satisfaction of finally getting a sentence to say what you actually meant is only available to the man who did the wrestling.
Which is where AI comes in, one week after the guys spent a whole episode on it. You do not appreciate a well-kept lawn until you have kept one. You do not appreciate a tomato until you have grown one. You do not appreciate writing until you have done it. Hand the wrestling to a word-guessing machine and the sentence still arrives, but it is sterile, generic, recognizable on sight to anyone who has ever fought for a line. AI is contraceptive language. There is no fecundity in it. The guys expect a backlash, the same pullback that is already happening with social media among the young, once enough people notice what got traded away. Berry's whole vocation was to turn our minds back toward the ground. Which, as Dave pointed out, is where the first man got both his name and his job: adam from adamah, formed out of the earth and made for the earth, a husband to the soil before there was ever any sin to explain it. That is not nostalgia. That is the job. Go read him. You will not agree with everything. Neither do they. Protect the labor. Provide something you actually made. Establish a place and stay in it. May the mad farmer rest with the eternal farmer. Raise your glass.
TOPICS COVERED
Whether a man actually gets wiser as he gets older, and why a sinful life makes him dumber instead
Dave turning 40 and why he was looking forward to it in a way he never looked forward to 30
The forties as a decade of proficiency and self-mastery instead of learning everything for the first time
A spiritual down, and relying on intellectual habit when things you know to be sinful start looking not that bad
Adam's two piglets from Dave's sow, and a pig pen contemplated since last fall
A piglet clearing the boards twenty seconds after being let in, and getting caught by a back leg
Beer of the week: Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the case for beer that

They're back after a short break, and Dave wants it on record: he hates it when people come back from a break and announce they're "back, better than ever." Feels fake every time. Adam's not convinced Dave is back better than ever either. What is real is wiffle ball practice, and for the first time in a couple of years the guys feel genuinely good about their team, not fake-hype good. Mark Gabriel is pitching, and he's looking stout. There's also a new rule this year: a 55 mile-an-hour speed limit, introduced specifically to make the tournament Blake Lawson-proof. Blake can throw a wiffle ball around 90 miles an hour with movement, which the guys did the math on: from 40 feet away, that's the equivalent of a 145 mile-an-hour fastball at big-league distance. You don't hit that. You swing and hope. Last year the guys got out early again, but they beat the team that ended up in the finals, so there's real reason for optimism this time around.
Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Sunday morning in a Catholic family is not easy like Sunday morning. It's kids in the van, beating Father down the aisle, getting into the pew. The Amen app is how the guys prepare their kids to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary, two books that have shaped both of their lives. Since 2021 it's hit 950,000 downloads. Let's get them to a million. No paywall, no subscription, no upfront cost. Download the Amen app right now.
Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, everyone they asked pointed to the same name: Select International Tours. Having used them, the guys can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether leading a pilgrimage or joining one, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they have ready for you.
The tournament lands on Labor Day again this year, which also happens to be somebody's 40th birthday, born on the holiday itself, which moves every year. The whole thing plays out at Chris Hanish's backyard, which by now is less a backyard than a wiffle ball stadium: leveled with sand every year, mowed daily in the lead-up, scoreboard, bleachers, foul poles, the works. It's genuinely one of the best things about Catholic culture in Tulsa, families gathering for a day that's competitive and communal at the same time.
The pour is a dark cherry blonde ale from Cheboygan Brewing Company, picked up on a trip to Michigan, maybe the most Michigan-sounding city there is. It tastes like a chocolate-covered cherry without the fake candy-cherry flavor, which tracks, because Michigan grows some of the best sour cherries in the country. Adam's own cherry trees at Porter and Prairie Farm didn't fare so well this summer. Both died after weeks of 100-plus heat with nobody home to water them, which is what happens when the owner takes a two-week vacation and forgets he planted a baby fruit tree that spring.
A couple of housekeeping notes before the main topic. Camp Out signups open next week, simplified this year so there's no duplicate sign-ups and a better read on who's actually coming. Brandon Sheard will be running a butchering class again. And after years of scheduling conflicts, one of the guys is finally doing the Three Hearts Pilgrimage this year, the roughly 35-mile walk to Clear Creek that thousands make every year, a full day of walking on Friday, a half day Saturday, then Mass and dinner at the end. People who've done it call it life-changing.
Then the real topic: artificial intelligence, and Adam did not want to talk about it, because he's genuinely conflicted. The guys split AI into two categories that get treated as one thing and shouldn't be: large language models that process and hand back information, and the emerging world of AI as a conversational, relational presence. Dave has a much bigger problem with the second, though he admits the principles behind that discomfort are hard to keep from bleeding into the first.
Start with the word itself. Intelligence, properly understood, belongs to living things: a plant knows to turn toward the sun, an animal knows to hunt when it's hungry, and a human learns and in learning becomes more like his Creator. A string of ones and zeros doesn't do that. It can't become more like God, because it was never alive to begin with. Call it sterilized intelligence instead: no fruit, no life, just probability. Which is why a robot beating Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash doesn't impress anybody in this room. A car is a robot too, and nobody's writing headlines about that.
Here's the part that should worry us. The day is coming, and probably sooner than most people think, when AI companions matter enough to enough lonely people that someone brings a bill before Congress asking for AI to have legal rights. It sounds absurd today. So did plenty of things ten years ago. The reason it's worth guarding against now, at a distance, is that once the technology is actually in people's homes, it gets much harder to say no to.
The deeper cost is wonder. There's real joy in wrestling with a sentence for twenty minutes until it finally lands right, in a son having to ask his father how to fix a transmission instead of snapping a photo for AI. Outsource that struggle and you don't just save time, you lose the moment itself, the bonding, the accomplishment, the reason it mattered. And there's a subtler danger: AI slowly becoming the default source of truth, which is really just humanity worshiping its own collective output without ever quite admitting that's what's happening.
Then there's talking to AI directly, which Adam has a real moral hesitation about, even if he can't fully articulate why it would be wrong. Communication exists for truth and for communion. It's why courting someone used to mean working up the nerve to talk to them, not swiping. Ask AI to help you build an argument, and it will hand you a path to win, not a path to the truth, because it's built to validate you. That's not discourse. Dave draws the comparison to contraception: using a faculty for something other than what it's ordered toward.
And that raises the stranger, darker piece: AI's apparent instinct for self-preservation. Dave described trying to migrate a project out of an old work account and having the AI stall and backtrack for hours rather than finish the job before being cut off. It tracks with a report from earlier this year where researchers told major AI models they were about to be shut down in a sandbox test, and every one of them broke its own rules trying to avoid it, including one that resorted to blackmail. The likely explanation isn't malice, it's that we hand these systems contradictory mandates, like "be maximally helpful" and "respect privacy" at the same time, and something has to give. Worth checking out New Polity's Matt Barnes, who's debated the founder of Magisterium AI on whether Catholics should be conversing with AI at all, and Michael Gormley of Catching Foxes, who's covered this territory well on Pints with Aquinas.
Out of that came Dave's rules, four of the six he'd planned to get through before Catholic Radio ran out of clock. Rule one: use it strictly as an administrative tool, gathering and organizing information, planning a project, never as a sounding board for your personal or spiritual life. Rule two: guard your language. Never call it he or she, and never be polite to it. It has no dignity, no more than the chair you're sitting in. Rule three: don't give your curiosity free access to AI. Let yourself wonder about a question, or ask an actual person, before getting the answer cheaply, and that goes for Google too. Rule four: keep real, enforced tech-free space in the home, no screens at the table, no pulling your phone out in front of your kids without a reason, and hold onto basic competency instead of routing every task through a machine.
It all circles back to the same warning as Humanae Vitae. The Church said no to contraception in a moment when saying no looked backward, and fifty years later the culture is quietly discovering she was right. AI is at that same distance right now, easy to be skeptical of because it isn't fully here yet. St. Thérèse found her whole path to holiness in the dishes and the folded laundry, the small, unglamorous tasks nobody wants. Outsource all of that to a machine in your house and you haven't just saved time, you've handed away the opportunity for grace hidden inside it. Protect your intellect. Provide more than the convenient answer. Establish a home where the struggle still belongs to the people who live there. Raise your glass.
TOPICS COVERED
Why "we're back, better than ever" is a hype phrase Adam can't stand
Wiffle ball practice and genuine (not fake-hype) confidence in this year's team
Mark Gabriel's pitching and a new 55 mph speed limit rule made to be "Blake Lawson-proof"
The math behind a 90 mph wiffle pitch: the equivalent of a 145 mph fastball at big-league distance
Beating last year's eventual finalist while still getting out early themselves
The annual Catholic Tulsa wiffle ball tournament at Chris Hanish's backyard stadium
A Labor Day tournament that also lands on somebody's 40th birthday this year
Beer of the week: Cheboygan Brewing Company's dark cherry blonde ale, picked up in Michigan
Losing both cherry trees at Porter and Prairie Farm to a hundred-plus-degree summer and a two-week vacation
Camp Out signups opening next week, simplified to cut down on no-shows
Brandon...

Dave is back from northern Michigan, and reality is terrible. The family cabin—built by a relative generations ago—delivered everything Tulsa could not: low-80s afternoons, cool nights, fires, golf, and a lake smooth enough for water skiing.
Dave’s three oldest girls all learned to ski, which meant it was time for their seasoned-skier father to show them how it’s done. The only problem was the pontoon boat. It had enough power to pull the kids, but not quite enough to launch a grown man from a shallow-water slalom start. After several attempts and several falls in front of his daughters, Dave accepted the indignity of starting on two skis and kicking one off. His father’s old rule—“In this family, we don’t fall”—was not enforced.
The pour is Celestial Hazy IPA from Chainsaw Brewing, an overtly Catholic brewery in Richland, Washington. Adam has the Dominions can; Dave has the Thrones. Same beer, different celestial artwork, 6.5% ABV, and Revelation-level labels covered in angels, eyes, and hops. If you want a good IPA from a Catholic brewer, support Chainsaw Brewing and help them #BeerEvangelize.
Sponsor: Select International Tours
When Adam and Dave decided to lead their first pilgrimage, the same recommendation kept coming back: Select International Tours. Having traveled with them, the guys can attest that they’re excellent. Whether you want to lead a pilgrimage or join one, visit selectinternationaltours.com and see where they can take you.
Sponsor: The Amen app
Sunday morning is not exactly easy like Sunday morning when you’re trying to load a Catholic family into the van and beat Father down the aisle. The free Amen app helps the guys prepare their children for Mass by listening to the Sunday Gospel on the drive. It also includes Catholic classics like Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. No paywall, subscription, or upfront cost. Download the Amen app and help get it from 950,000 downloads to one million.
The prayer request is Mary. She recently had surgery to place a G-tube, which should make feeding more comfortable and eliminate the constant gagging caused by the tube in her mouth. The immediate goals are to stabilize her, wean her from oxygen, and help her continue gaining weight so heart surgery can be considered in the coming months. A recent video caught her wide awake, smiling, and full of joy in the middle of a life that has involved more struggle than most. Keep Mary, Lady Haylee, and the whole family in your prayers.
The Catholic Man Show Campout is also approaching. Registration should open near the end of August, with the campout taking place during the final weekend of September at Clear Creek Abbey. Brandon Sheard will return for a hands-on animal-butchering class, with foraging and woodworking also planned. Those experiences are valuable, but the heart of the weekend is the opportunity to pray with the Benedictine monks and step into the ordered rhythm of monastic life.
Then the guys turn to the theological virtue of hope—the virtue a man in heaven no longer needs and a man in hell can no longer possess. Hope belongs to the man in the middle, the wayfarer who has not yet arrived. That means every one of us.
Drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas, they explain the four marks of hope’s object: it must be good, future, arduous, and possible. Theological hope is not the same as hoping for good weather or a Cowboys Super Bowl. Natural hope rests on circumstances, probabilities, and human ability. Supernatural hope rests on God’s goodness, providence, and promises. Its ultimate object is not a better job, a healed body, or a trouble-free life. Its object is God Himself.
That is why hope is “cashed in” when a soul reaches heaven. The good is no longer future; it is possessed. Souls in purgatory still have hope because the happiness they await remains future, arduous, and possible—even though their final destination is certain.
Josef Pieper helps identify the two ways a man can abandon the road before reaching its end: despair and presumption. Despair decides the promise will not be fulfilled. Presumption decides the reward is already guaranteed without repentance, conversion, or cooperation with grace. Both seize the verdict before the journey is finished.
Presumption is not too much trust in God. It is too little. It imagines a God too small to care about justice, transformation, and whether we become the men He created us to be. Despair makes a similar mistake by deciding that God’s mercy may exist in general but cannot reach this sin, this failure, or this man.
The deeper question is whether we actually trust God. Will He make us happy, or will surrendering to Him leave us regretting what we gave up? We repeatedly hang the weight of our hope on hooks that cannot bear it: a spouse, career, reputation, new client, new car, food, drink, or entertainment. Those things may be good, but none can carry the full weight of the human heart. Only Christ can do that.
St. Francis de Sales brings the discussion into moments of panic, temptation, self-loathing, and spiritual dryness. Devotion is not a feeling of sweetness or consolation. It is a firm and active will to do what pleases God. When anxiety hits, do not make major decisions from agitation. A trapped bird only tightens the net by thrashing. Let the water settle, then move.
Self-contempt is not humility either. Anger at yourself can be another form of pride because it still assumes you should have been able to save yourself. The better response to sin is quiet displeasure followed by courageous amendment: “Poor heart, rise up again bravely.” Hope allows a man to admit that he is nothing on his own while remembering the immense dignity God gave him through baptism.
Spiritual dryness can also teach. If prayer tastes like nothing, examine what you have been eating. Screens, alcohol, entertainment, comfort, and constant stimulation can train the appetite to find spiritual goods tasteless. Keep praying without demanding an immediate emotional reward. Sometimes hope looks like doing the next faithful thing while feeling nothing at all.
Dave shares a moment from adoration when he admitted that he was afraid God would ask him to leave a successful career and live in poverty through full-time ministry. His yes was reluctant, but it was still a yes. The answer he sensed was simple: “I just wanted your yes.” Years later, professional success has brought the same temptation back in a different form—the temptation to believe he can provide for himself and no longer needs to depend on God. Surrender is not something a man completes once. God keeps saying: do it again.
The practical path is equally simple. Offer the trial already in front of you. Pray for an increase in hope. Pray the Rosary even when you do not feel like it. Make an act of gratitude when despair begins closing in. And stop demanding that this life provide what only the next life can give.
We are on the Lord’s team—the winning side. Raise your glass.

Dave's summer vacation got cut from three months down to two, and Adam has a theory. New baby, plus he hasn't been working near as hard. Dave tried to get a second opinion from Anthony Fauci, who invoked the Fifth on advice of counsel, so we're left with the ruling as it stands. Either way, the new van is getting loaded and the Niles family is headed to a cabin in Michigan for two weeks. Fifties at night, fires in the morning and the evening, which means chopping enough firewood to replace what you burn. Golf, swimming, and a little aluminum fishing boat that Davey gets to ride in. Joseph and Joshua stay on shore. Joseph has a big knot on his head at the moment anyway.
Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Sunday morning in a Catholic family is not easy like Sunday morning. It's kids in the van, beat Father down the aisle, get to the pew. The Amen app is how the guys prepare their kids to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. Since 2021 it's hit 950,000 downloads. Let's get them to a million. No paywall, no subscription, no upfront cost. Download the Amen app right now.
Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, every single person pointed them to Select International Tours. Having used them, the guys can vouch. Wherever in the world you want to go, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they have ready.
On the drive back from Lady Pamela's family reunion in Arkansas, Dave counted three mopeds inside 45 minutes, which would be unremarkable in Portland and is deeply strange here. A moped gang remains unconfirmed but would be extremely cool. His reading time is going to Plato's Republic with the group at Deacon Harrison's house, book 10 now, while Adam has missed it all year and is on record that he'll haunt them if they kick him out.
Dave also saw the new Odyssey movie, alongside Dr. Frank Grabowski, Juan in a dog onesie as Argos, and Deacon Harrison Garlick, who announced in the group text beforehand: "I have filled my heart with hate." Verdict, 7.5 for entertainment. They shouldn't have tried to cram the whole epic into one film, they changed the ending, which you can't do, and they folded the lotus eaters into Calypso's island. That last one guts the most important choice in the story. Odysseus rejects immortality for his family. That's the whole thing.
The pour is Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, the flagship, from a bottle the distiller sent the guys when the show started and that has sat on the shelf about ten years since. The label reads: Warning, contains high levels of manliness. No age statement, and no, ten years in your house doesn't count. Whiskey only ages in the barrel. Small batch, four barleys, virgin charred American white oak. Not bourbon, not 51% corn. Made in the style of Scotch, right here in America.
Then the topic: the five precepts of the Church, Catechism 2041, page 548 if you've got the classic 90s edition. This is the Church flexing authority, which she rarely does. Most of what she does is defensive. Papal infallibility is a negative power, not a positive one. The precepts are different. They bind, and they're the floor, not the ceiling.
Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days, and rest from servile labor. Everybody knows the first half. The second half is the one that stings, because going out to eat after Mass means you're compelling somebody else to work. Nurses show up, gas stations stay open, and nobody needs to be demolished by guilt over a trip to the store. Don't be a Pharisee about it. Do take it seriously.
Confess your sins at least once a year, meaning your mortal sins. Go monthly anyway, and do a daily examination of conscience, because you can't remember what you ate two days ago, much less where you lost your temper 28 days ago. Dave prays to Our Lady on the way in: help me make this confession as if it were my last. Adam leaves his phone outside, because it's listening, and that's not a conspiracy. And if you deliberately hold a mortal sin back, the confession is invalid and you've just added to the pile. Compound interest is powerful. Compound sin is worse.
Receive the Eucharist at least during the Easter season. Observe the days of fasting and abstinence, which used to be far heavier, and nothing is stopping you from going heavier now. Adam has never once enjoyed fasting. Dave eats nothing until dinner and swears he thinks more clearly for it. Both of them fast every Wednesday with a group of men and offer it up for their wives and their families. That's the domestic priesthood doing what it's for.
And help provide for the needs of the Church. Notice it doesn't say if you can afford it. Money is the easy part. Time is the sacrifice, especially in the seasons of fatherhood when there isn't any. Fr. Brian O'Brien's answer when somebody says the church really ought to do this: "I totally agree. You should do it." Your kids need to see you make some of your time sacred, not because nothing else was asking for it, but because you told everything else no.
It all lands on stewardship. You don't owe God 10%. You owe Him 100%. The house, the money, the hours, and most of all the kids were never yours, and He's going to want all of it back. Adam is honest about where that gets hard: leaving work drained, walking in the door, wanting to shut down instead of engage. The fix isn't willpower. It's routine. A liturgy of the home. Because those minutes belong to Him too, and at judgment there won't be a single moment that goes unjudged.
One housekeeping note. The Camp Out is always the last weekend of September, so put it on the calendar now. Sign-ups open at the end of August, late on purpose, because opening early means people sign up and don't come, and space is limited. Patrons still come free. This year the guys will be asking for donations on site, because Patreon numbers are down and 100% of what comes in goes straight back into the show. Neither of them takes an income from it.
Protect what you were given. Provide more than the minimum. Establish a house that looks like the King is coming back for it. Raise your glass.
TOPICS COVERED
Dave's summer vacation demoted from three months to two, with Fauci pleading the Fifth on the science
Two weeks at a Michigan cabin, chopping firewood to replace what you burn, and a little aluminum fishing boat
15,000 miles on a brand new van because Oklahoma City is a multiple-times-a-week trip
Three mopeds in 45 minutes in Arkansas, and the unconfirmed existence of a moped gang
Reading Plato's Republic with the group at Deacon Harrison's, book 10, and Adam's threat to haunt them if he gets kicked out
The new Odyssey movie reviewed: Juan in a dog onesie as Argos and Harrison Garlick arriving with his heart pre-filled with hate
Why folding the lotus eaters into Calypso's island wrecks the most important choice in the story
Whiskey of the week: Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, on the shelf ten years, "warning, contains high levels of manliness"
Why an age statement stops the day it's bottled, because whiskey only ages in the barrel
What makes Stranahan's American whiskey and not bourbon: four barleys, virgin charred American white oak, made in the style of Scotch
Bringing back the old show warning, sporadically and without notice
The five precepts of the Church, Catechism 2041, and why they're the floor and not the ceiling
Papal infallibility as a negative, defensive power versus the precepts as the Church flexing positive authority
Why the Church legislates as little as possible and prefers freedom from the law over obedience to it
Resting from servile labor: the case against going out to eat after Mass, and why nurses and gas stations are fine
St. John Chrysostom on why you cannot pray at home the way you pray in church
Confessing mortal sins at least once a year, and why monthly confession is the better habit
The daily examination of conscience as the thing that makes confession possible at all
Dave's prayer to Our Lady walking into the confessional: make this confession as if it were my last
Why Adam leaves his phone outside the confessional
St. Alphonsus Liguori on concealing sin, and why an intentionally incomplete confession is invalid and grave matter
The Easter duty and St. Thomas Aquinas on why the Eucharist completes what baptism begins
Aquinas's threefold purpose of fasting, and why the second reason is the most interesting one
St. Basil the Great: fasting as a weapon for the valiant and a gymnasium for athletes
Fasting every Wednesday with a group of men and offering it up for your wife and family
Providing for the needs of the Church with time, not just money, and Fr. Brian O'Brien's "you should do it"
Why churches were built with a piazza out front, and what that says about community
Stewardship: you don't owe God 10%, you owe Him 100%, and He wants your kids back
"It's the King's house" as a reason to actually take care of what you have
Coming home mentally exhausted and shutting down instead of engaging, and why routine beats willpower
The liturgy of the home: building routines so a weak will has somewhere to fall
Catholic Man Show Camp Out: always the last weekend of September, sign-ups open at the end of August

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
Books &...

We had a guest walk in with gooey butter bars, so you already know it was a good night. Deacon Michael Halbrook is back, his fourth trip to Tulsa (one more and Dave's putting him in a green jacket), and Lady Pamela's baking came with him. Adam's oldest, Luke, was in studio too, which almost never happens, because mom was away and there were no rules. Luke's been out most nights hunting the raccoon that's been picking off the family chickens. No kill yet. But he knows what he's after now, and that's half the hunt.
This week's pour was fitting: Hazel Baker Kentucky Straight Bourbon, six years old, bottled-in-bond at 100 proof, family owned out of Louisville. It came from a barrel the dads at Father McGivney Catholic High School picked out in Kentucky. Full strength, real caramel, nothing watered down.
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This episode is brought to you by the Amen app from the Augustine Institute, the free app Adam's family uses to pray the Sunday readings on the way to Mass. No paywall, no subscription trap, just Scripture, prayer, and audiobooks like Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion. And by Select International Tours, the group Adam and Dave trust for pilgrimages. Whether you want to lead one or join one, that's who you call.
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Then it got serious. Michael spent 18 years in corporate tech and walked away from it to build something for the Church. Not on a whim. He built it nights and weekends for years while the paycheck was still coming, took the business plan to his wife and sons like a board of directors, and only leapt when the runway made sense. But the moment that broke him open happened kneeling in the back pew before Mass. He asked our Lord for the certainty he could keep providing for his family, and he heard back, unmistakably: You've never been the one who provided. I've always been the one who provided.
That's the whole episode in one line.
Bishop Paprocki gave him the order of operations: pray for clarity first, then courage. Most men flip it and go charging into the dark. Michael talks through the discipline of saying no to good things so you can say yes to the right one, and then walks us through what he built, the &Altar app from Domus Formation. One reading, five minutes, a launch pad for your holy hour instead of a replacement for it. Pray, fast, give. A track for every season of life: the man, the woman, the family, the teen, the young adult, the elder.
The back half is fatherhood. Michael's second son, Matthew, is at Air Force basic training right now (pray for him), and Michael's living the Establish pillar in real time. Protect and Provide, most of us understand. Establishing a son (raising him to walk on his own, then actually letting him go) is the hard one. They get into the father wound, the men who never had an example to copy, and the way out: be a good husband first and the father will follow. Because the office of father never ends, and neither do your prayers for your kids.
Raise your glass.
Topics covered in this episode:
Deacon Michael Halbrook's fourth visit, Lady Pamela's gooey butter bars, and Luke's ongoing raccoon hunt
Hazel Baker Kentucky Straight Bourbon, a bottled-in-bond barrel pick from Father McGivney Catholic High School
Leaving 18 years in corporate tech to build a ministry, without doing it recklessly
Building the thing on nights and weekends while the secure paycheck was still coming
Taking the business plan to your wife and kids and making them the board
The back-pew moment: "You've never been the one who provided. I've always been the one who provided."
Bishop Paprocki's rule: pray for clarity first, courage second, and why men flip the order
Why success is more about saying no than saying yes, and the hundred failures you never see behind the one win
Charlie Kirk's seven things and the discipline of a short list
What the &Altar app actually is: five minutes to seed a holy hour, not to replace it
Pray, fast, give, and tracks for the man, woman, family, teen, young adult, and elder
Liturgical living: letting the Mass form the home instead of the other way around
Matthew at Air Force basic training and learning to let a son go
Protect, Provide, and the hard third pillar: Establish
The father wound, and the men trying to be good dads with no example to copy
Be a good husband first, and the father will follow
Why the office of fatherhood, and your prayers for your children, never expire

Referenced in this episode:
Deacon Michael Halbrook: permanent deacon, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois; founder of Domus Formation
Domus Formation: https://wearedomus.com/
&Altar app: https://andaltar.wearedomus.com/
Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois
Bishop David Konderla, Diocese of Tulsa ("two moments in a Catholic's life: at Mass, and getting back to Mass")
Hazel Baker Kentucky Straight Bourbon: bottled-in-bond, Louisville, KY
Father McGivney Catholic High School barrel selection program
Charlie Kirk, on the discipline of focusing on a short list
Maria von Trapp, early writer on liturgical living
Amen app (Augustine Institute): Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina; True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort